Sunday, March 13, 2011

Narco-dreams

My friend's son had just seen the front page of a tabloid newspaper in Mexico City. He was on his way to school, and one of the street vendors had waved it in front of the car window.

Eight-year-old kids shouldn't ask those sorts of questions, in my mind. But more and more, throughout Mexico, kids are being exposed to horrors unfathomable to most of us.

Then there are the dreams. A friend of a friend recently had her first narco-dream, as I call them.

I've talked to a few kids in Mexico about their dreams. In one kid's dream, he was slowly slicing through a man's neck with a saw. He recalled thinking, (in the dream), this is wrong, so wrong. This is sick. I must wake up, I must wake up, he thought.

He forced himself to wake up, in a cold sweat. He was only 11 years old.

On one occasion in Badiraguato, as I wrote in my book, I slept like a baby. As I nodded off to sleep, I kept thinking: Chapo knows I'm here. His people know. They've given their blessing. They won't kill me, there's no reason to. No reason for unwanted attention by kidnapping me. I drifted off to sleep.

I went into a deep sleep that night. I dreamed of running through the marijuana fields that lay behind me, out the window (pic above). I dreamed that I was running between the flames as the soldiers burned them down. I dreamed that I looked up and saw Chapo, standing on a hillside, looking down on the carnage, grimacing.

I woke up. The mosquitoes had bitten me to death, but I was very much alive. I wandered over to the military parade in the center of town. People had begun to gather. The soldiers weren't invited to their own parade; a few forlorn grunts stared over the wall of their barracks as locals walked past.

The parade began. The town's officials walked solemnly past the crowds; a group of local schoolkids followed, as did a brass band. No army. A few people whispered about Chapo. There was a rumour that he might make an appearance. A helicopter circled overhead – Gen. Noe Sandoval and his men had heard the rumour too, it appeared. Chapo didn't come.

I wandered over to the church, where a year before I had met a young boy whose parents helped maintain it.

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About Me

I'm a 39-year-old freelance journalist/author, until recently based in Mexico City. I've written for Newsweek (with whom I was an editor from 2000 to 2007) Slate.com, Foreign Policy, Jane's Intelligence Weekly, FDI magazine, the Sunday Times, World Politics Review, Soldier of Fortune, The News (Mexico City), The Sun, Nogales International and the Haitian Times. I've written two books on Mexico's drug war, "The Last Narco," published September 2010, and "Hasta El Ultimo Dia," published in March 2012. I hold a Master's Degree in War Studies from the University of Glasgow.
I have provided commentary on the drug war for CNN, NPR, the BBC, The New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, AOL News, CTV (Canada), Xinhua, El Universal and Reforma (Mexico) and several other publications and major news outlets.
I can be reached for requests for commentary/talks on the Mexican drug war at mbeithpublic@gmail.com
The photos and opinions on this site are my own, unless otherwise specified.